I can only imagine what my father, a lapsed Methodist, would have said about charges from multiple women that Judge Roy Moore, candidate for Senate in Alabama, and famous for having illegally planted the Ten Commandments in front of his courthouse, had groped them as teenagers. “Jesus!” my dad would have yelled. To which my mother, an equally lapsed Presbyterian, would have replied: “Phil, Jesus has nothing to do with it.”

Wacky things continue to happen in the Age of Trump, wackier than we ever could have imagined a year ago. Yet it seems that the removal of Roy Moore as a candidate for United States Senate from Alabama has stalled, even though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan have finally understood that dithering on this point is making them look immoral and foolish. Both men have urged Moore to withdraw from the race, after almost a week of appending: “If these allegations are true…” to the beginning of every sentence.

What caused McConnell, Ryan, and numerous other Republican senators to start looking for the exit lights? 

For the rest of this post, originally published on November 15 2017,  go to Public Seminar.